Many card games are popular throughout the world, with blackjack, baccarat, poker and poker variables being among the most popular wagering games. Examples of games that are easy to play but are difficult and costly to administer are blackjack and baccarat. In baccarat, one table is commonly attended by up to three casino personnel, regardless of the number of players. In addition, because the stakes are typically very high, credit managers and security personnel remain in close proximity to the table at all times. Casinos throughout the U.S. have baccarat tables, and many of these tables are high stakes tables. It is not unusual to observe players wagering large amounts in each round of play. Baccarat is a preferred game in Macau.
The game of baccarat is fairly simple to play from the player's perspective. The player is not given any opportunity to make decisions that would have an impact on the outcome of the game. The game is typically played with eight standard decks of 52 cards each, and the cards are typically shuffled and wrapped in the back end of the casino, out of the player's view. The cards are commonly destroyed or damaged by players during play, and it is typical for the casino to use the cards only once.
Baccarat has great appeal to gamblers. One rule of etiquette followed by certain players when playing baccarat is to never bet against the most elderly player at the table. If the most elderly player bets on the banker's hand, all other players at the table either bet on the same hand or they do not play. Betting against the most elderly player is viewed as being disrespectful to that player and bad luck.
The rules that the banker must follow in resolving hands in baccarat are fairly complicated, and the dealers can make errors, resulting in inadvertently overpaying players. In addition, the players handle cards, and the wagers are located in close proximity to the players' hands, making it easier for a player to slip in extra betting chips, for example, when the player's hand is particularly good, or remove chips when the player's hand is poor. Surveillance systems may not be in place, or may be inadequate to monitor all the activities taking place at the table.
Dealers might also collude with players, in order to cheat the house. Because the stakes are typically very high, any cheating and/or errors in operating the game can have a very large impact on the casino's revenue. For this reason, it would be desirable to have a system that could automatically monitor the play of baccarat, and have the capability of alerting the house to dealer errors, cheating and the like in real time.
Cards are ordinarily provided to players in casino table card games either directly from a deck held in the dealer's hand or with cards removed by the dealer from a dealing shoe, dealing rack or directly from a card shuffler. The original dealing racks were little more than trays that supported the deck(s) of cards and allowed the dealer to remove the front card (with its back facing up to hide the rank of the card) and deliver it to a player. Over the years, both stylistic and functional changes have been made to dealing shoes, which have been used for blackjack, baccarat, CASINO WAR®, mini-baccarat and other casino table card games.
The prior art describes a number of game play monitoring devices and systems that are used to monitor activity on a live gaming table. The following is a summary of known devices and systems.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,929,339 to Mattioli discloses a mechanical, manually driven card delivery shoe (without card-reading functionality) that uses a cartridge component for carrying shuffled playing cards to the card delivery shoe. The individual cards are advanced out of the shoe by means of feed rollers and the set of cards within the cartridge are advanced towards an output end within the shoe by weights moved along a rack and pinion gearing.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,750,743 to Nicoletti describes the use of a mechanical card-dispensing means to advance cards at least part way out of the shoe. The described invention is for a dispenser for playing cards comprising: a shoe adapted to contain a plurality of stacked playing cards, the playing cards including a leading card and a trailing card; the shoe including a back wall, first and second side walls, a front wall, a base, and an inclined floor extending from the back wall to proximate the front wall and adapted to support the playing cards; the floor being inclined downwardly from the back wall to the front wall; the front wall having an opening and otherwise being adapted to conceal the leading card; and the front wall, side walls, base and floor enclosing a slot positioned adjacent the floor, the slot being sized to permit a playing card to pass through the slot; card-advancing means contacting the trailing card and adapted to urge the stacked cards down the inclined floor; card-dispensing means positioned proximate the front wall and adapted to dispense a single card at a time, the card-dispensing means including leading card contact means adapted for rotation about an axis parallel to the leading card, whereby rotation of the leading card contact means displaces the leading card relative to the card stack and into a predetermined position extending out of the shoe from the slot; and an endless belt located in the opening in the front wall for rotating the leading card contact means, the endless belt having an exterior surface securely engaging the leading card contact means and being adapted to be displaced by an operator.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,779,546 to Meissner describes a method and apparatus to enable a game to be played based upon a plurality of cards. An automated dealing shoe dispenses each of the cards and recognizes each of the cards as each of the cards is dispensed. Player stations are also included. Each player station enables a player to enter a bet, request that a card be dispensed or not dispensed, and to convert each bet into a win or a loss based upon the cards that are dispensed by the automated dealing shoe. This patent discloses card readers for the play of blackjack.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,217,447 to Lofink et al. describes a method and system for generating displays related to the play of baccarat. Cards dealt to each of the banker's and player's hands are identified as scanning and data signals are generated. The card identification data signals are processed to determine the outcome of the hand. Displays in various formats to be used by bettors are created from the processed identification signals including the cards of the hand played, historical records of outcomes and the like. The display can also show bettors expected outcomes and historical bests. Bettors can refer to the display in making betting decisions.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,582,301; 6,299,536; 6,039,650; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,722,893 to Hill describe a shoe equipped with a card scanner that scans indicia on a playing card as the card moves along and out of a chute by manual direction by the dealer in the normal fashion. The scanner can be one of several different types of devices that will sense each card as it is moved downwardly and out of the shoe. A feed forward neural-network is trained, using error back-propagation to recognize all possible card suits and card values sensed by the scanner.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,126,166 to Lorson et al. describes a system for monitoring play of a card game between a dealer and one or more players at a playing table, comprising: (a) a card-dispensing shoe comprising one or more active card recognition sensors positioned to generate signals corresponding to transitions between substantially light background and dark pip areas as standard playing cards are dispensed from the card-dispensing shoe, without generating a bit-mapped image of each dispensed standard playing card; and (b) a signal processing subsystem. The subsystem may be adapted to: receive the transition signals generated by the active card recognition sensors; determine, in real time and based on the transition signals, playing card values for the dispensed standard playing cards; and determine, in real time, a current table statistical advantage/disadvantage relative to the players for playing cards remaining in the card-dispensing shoe.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,941,769 to Order describes a device for professional use in table games of chance with playing cards and gaming chips (jettons), in particular the game of “blackjack.” An automatically working apparatus is provided, which will register and evaluate all phases of the run of the game automatically. This is achieved by a card shoe with an integrated device for recognition of the value of the drawn cards (optical recognition device and mirroring into a CCD-image converter); photodiodes arranged under the table cloth in order to register separately the casino light passing through each area for placing the gaming chips and areas for placing the playing cards in dependence of the arrangement or movement of the jettons and playing cards on the mentioned areas; a device for automatic recognition of each bet (scanner to register the color of the jettons, or an RFID-system comprising a S/R station and jettons with integrated transponder); an EDP program created in accordance with the gaming rules to evaluate and store all data transmitted from the functional devices to the computer; and a monitor to display the run of the game and players' wins.
Each of the references identified in the Background of the Art and the remainder of the specification, including any Related Application Data are incorporated herein by reference in their entirety as part of the enabling disclosure for such elements as apparatus, methods, hardware and software. It would be desirable to provide a system comprising software and hardware that could monitor the game of baccarat.